Police Killings Reveal Chasms Between Races

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Ashley Bernaugh of Florissant, Mo., said that after Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., she was surprised and upset by reactions from some family members.CreditCreditWhitney Curtis for The New York Times

FERGUSON, Mo. — In the decade that Ashley Bernaugh, who is white, has been with her black husband, her family in Indiana has been so smitten with him that she teases them that they love him more than her.

So Ms. Bernaugh was somewhat surprised by her family’s reaction after Darren Wilson, a white police officer here, killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. Forced into more frank discussions about race with her family than ever before, Ms. Bernaugh, 29, said her relatives seemed more outraged by the demonstrations than the killing, which she saw as an injustice.

“They don’t understand it’s as prevalent as it is,” Ms. Bernaugh said, referring to racial discrimination. “It’s just disappointing to think that your family wants to pigeonhole a whole race of people, buy into the rhetoric that, ‘Oh, these are violent protests.’ ”

It is as if Ms. Bernaugh, a nonprofit organizer living in the St. Louis suburb of Florissant, is straddling two worlds. In one, her black mother-in-law is patting her on the back, saying she is proud of her for speaking out against Mr. Brown’s killing. In the other, her white family and friends are telling her to quiet down because “you don’t know the whole picture.”

Race has never been an easy topic of conversation in America. But the recent high-profile deaths of black people at the hands of police officers in Ferguson, New York, Cleveland and elsewhere — and the nationwide protests those deaths spurred — have exposed sharp differences about race relations among friends, co-workers, neighbors and even relatives in unexpected and often uncomfortable ways.

Put bluntly, many people say, they feel they are being forced to pick a team.

In interviews here and around the country, both blacks and whites described tense conversations in office cubicles or across dinner tables about the killings and subsequent protests. Many described being surprised to learn, often on social media, about the opinions — and stereotypes — held by family and friends about people of other races. In some cases, those relationships have fractured, in person and online.

Kenny Hargrove, a black man from Brooklyn married to a white woman, said he and his wife confronted one of his in-laws for posting a racially insensitive meme on Facebook around the time Mr. Brown was killed. The relative was so upset that she unfriended them. Now, she is trying to mend fences and has sent a new friend request. But Mr. Hargrove, 36, said he was torn about whether to hit “confirm.”

“If I see one stupid thing from you, it’s over forever,” Mr. Hargrove said.

In fact, the day that a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, Mr. Hargrove posted this to his Facebook page: “This is for anyone still left on my friends list who’s wondering why black people are so angry right now. If you still don’t get it, if you still can’t see the pattern, if you still think the protests are nothing more than angry thugs who just want free TVs, let me know. I don’t have the energy to connect the dots for you, but I do have just enough left to hit ‘unfriend.’ ”

But Peter Weiss, a white resident of Staten Island, said many black people seem unwilling to consider alternative perspectives on police violence.

To illustrate his point, Mr. Weiss, 41, described an encounter on Wednesday at Karl’s Klipper, a bar and restaurant in Staten Island, when news flashed on a television screen that the grand jury had decided not to indict. An African-American whom he was friendly with walked over and called him a redneck, Mr. Weiss said.

The acquaintance was normally calm, kind and sensitive, but the news had set him off, Mr. Weiss said. The exchange solidified his belief that people were reaching conclusions about current events based on past racism that, in his view, no longer exists.

“Blacks and whites, we don’t hate anymore, there is no real racism anymore for anything real, like who can get a job,” he said. “Honestly, people are so stuck on the past, people need to grow up.”

Attitudes like that are why David Odom believes that race relations have deteriorated amid the recent police killings, and why he avoids talking to white people about sensitive racial topics. Blacks and whites come from different experiences, so reconciling their world views is too difficult, he said.

Mr. Odom, 50, a black lawyer living in the affluent, mostly white Chicago suburb of Naperville, recalled trying to explain to a close white friend why he thought the grand jury process in Mr. Brown’s case was racist.

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Kenny Hargrove, of Brooklyn, N.Y., had a similar experience to Ms. Bernaugh's.CreditAndrew Renneisen for The New York Times

“He didn’t believe it because, in his mind, he believed that the judicial system isn’t rigged,” Mr. Odom said. “He believed that the judicial system and the criminal justice system generally is fair, and I don’t. There’s a chasm between us.”

A black infantry lieutenant in Texas said he is generally hawkish about foreign policy and conservative on the economy. So some of his white Army colleagues were surprised to hear his reaction to the non-indictment in the Garner case.

Several people came into his office the day it was announced and said, “Can you believe these idiots in New York protesting?” said the lieutenant, Christopher, who asked that his last name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. His response, he said, was, “Can you believe these idiots didn’t hand out an indictment?”

He got awkward looks in response. “A lot of people at work, they have no idea how to respond to me right now,” he said.

Divisions over the killings are not simply black and white. They also run along generational, socioeconomic and geographical lines. Whites have joined blacks in street protests here and across the nation against police violence. And some blacks have joined whites in raising concerns about the behavior of blacks.

Still, in Ferguson, some whites said they felt like blacks had rushed to judgment in condemning them as bigots.

In Old Ferguson, where the police station is, a group of mostly black demonstrators marched down the street one recent, frigid evening, chanting angry slogans, and as they came upon Marley’s Bar and Grill, a line of police officers quickly formed between them and the establishment. The patrons inside were mostly white, and demonstrators stood outside yelling at them. When protesters peered in through a window and took pictures, some of the patrons pulled down a shade.

“We were told many times we were going to burn to the ground because we were white owners,” said Kelly Braun, 48, who owns the corner bar with her husband. “They yell stuff at us.”

Ms. Braun said her bar usually hosts a diverse crowd. But many black patrons have stayed away recently, dismayed over some of the actions on the street, she said.

“I’ve had so many apologies from different people — it’s because they’re embarrassed,” she said.

For some black business owners in Ferguson, the calculation about the protesters’ demands and the community’s well-being is a more complicated one.

Cathy Jenkins, who owns Cathy’s Kitchen with her husband, has experienced the wrath of angry demonstrations — someone threw a chair through one of her restaurant’s windows the night the grand jury decision in the Brown case was announced. But she has also experienced racism: Someone has been calling the restaurant regularly and repeating the N-word when the phone is answered.

Not surprisingly, she was torn about the reaction, sometimes violent, to the Brown killing. “I don’t want the community torn up, but I believe in standing up for your rights when it’s something that’s just,” she said.

Montague Simmons expected resistance last month when he and 20 other people slipped into the election night party of the newly elected St. Louis County executive, Steve Stenger, to protest Mr. Stenger’s support of Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecutor who many Brown supporters said mishandled the grand jury investigation of Mr. Wilson. But Mr. Simmons, a black union organizer, said he never thought the stiffest opposition would come from people he considered close allies.

As several demonstrators clustered to begin chanting, Mr. Simmons said, some white union members joined in trying to block them, while also identifying them to the police. These were the same white union members, Mr. Simmons said, whom he had worked with to advocate for things like raising the minimum wage and protecting collective bargaining rights.

“In any other setting, any other fight over the last two or three years, we’d be shoulder to shoulder,” Mr. Simmons said. “When it comes to race, all of a sudden that’s not the case.”

Correction:Dec. 9, 2014

A picture caption on Saturday with the continuation of an article about the sharp differences in race relations exposed by the deaths of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City misstated the sentiment that one person interviewed, Ashley Bernaugh, saw in the comments by her family. She considered the comments misinformed, not racist.

Reporting was contributed by Nate Schweber and Mosi Secret from New York, and Manny Fernandez, Mitch Smith, Monica Davey and Campbell Robertson from Ferguson.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Police Killings Reveal Chasms Between Races. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe